If I Had the Power to Change Something in the Past… I Wouldn’t

The question used to haunt me: If you could change one thing, what would it be?

I’ve played that scenario over and over in my mind, walking the shadowy halls of what could have been. If I could undo the years of injections, heartbreak, and waking up with empty arms—would I?

The first time I asked myself this, I cried. It wasn’t the gentle kind of crying you see in movies. It was the kind of sobbing that hollows you out, that makes your body shake so violently you wonder if you’ll ever feel whole again.

I wanted so desperately to go back. Back to a version of me who still believed. Back to a body that didn’t feel like a battleground. Back to a life that didn’t revolve around waiting rooms and whispered conversations with strangers in hospital gowns.

I hated the person infertility turned me into—the one who flinched when she saw pregnancy announcements, who stopped going to baby showers, who had to force a smile when people said, “It’ll happen, just be patient.”

For years, I thought the pain was pointless. A cruel joke from a universe that had forgotten about me.

But then, one evening, I found myself staring at an old photograph of myself. It was from before—before the treatments, before the losses, before the cracks formed in the life I thought was unbreakable. I barely recognized her.

She looked so sure of herself, so certain of how her story would unfold. Yet, in her eyes, I saw something I hadn’t expected: fragility.

That version of me had never known loss, not like this. She didn’t understand what it meant to truly fight for something. She had never been tested by the kind of pain that carves you open and leaves you questioning everything.

I realized something in that moment: I wouldn’t want to go back and protect her from what was coming. Because as much as I longed for her innocence, I didn’t want her ignorance.

Infertility stripped me of so much, but it also gave me something I never knew I needed: a deeper understanding of what it means to live. It taught me that life isn’t fair, that you can do everything right and still come up short. It showed me how to hold space for grief while still seeking joy, how to find beauty in a life that doesn’t match the one you planned.

And it forced me to answer the hardest question of all: Who am I if I’m not a mother?

The answer didn’t come easily. There were days when I felt like nothing. A failure. A shell of the person I used to be. But slowly, through the cracks in my heart, a new truth began to grow.

I am someone who survived. I am someone who kept going, even when it felt impossible. I am someone who found a way to keep loving life, even when it didn’t love me back in the way I wanted.

So no, I wouldn’t go back. I wouldn’t rewrite the story. Because the person I am today—the one who has learned to find meaning in the broken places—wouldn’t exist without the pain that shaped her.

If I had the power to change something in the past… I wouldn’t. Not because it wasn’t devastating, but because it forced me to discover a resilience I never thought I’d need.

And that’s something I wouldn’t trade for anything.